She paints the landscape red and gold,cossets fruit, more than we can hold, silvers webs and tinkers with the lightonly to plunge us into wintry night. Her leafy folly flutters and decays,the fruits of her labour last but days, winter haunts her with ghostly mistand bids her goodbye with an icy kiss. Kim M. Russell, […]
Category: Poems
A Walk in the Cemetery by Moonlight
A celebration before winter darkness,fingering crumbled earth with brightness, moonlight creeps through autumn turbulenceto gild gravestones hunkered in silence. Pale breath of lunar light tongues dustamong tattered leaves now turned to rust and scattered on well-trodden stones,traces epitaphs and seeks out bones, meagre offerings for a midnight repastbefore the cold season’s hollow fast. Something […]
Wind Music
Safe inside, we listen to the howling wind as it rips up foliage and tears limb from limb branches from ancient birch and oak. Ghostly draughts creep into every nook and cranny, they squeeze under doors and whistle dirges down the chimney. Outside, the wind, still duetting with the trees, sighs in more steadfast branches […]
Prayers of Bone
Beware this Halloweenand the days in between, when knuckles crackbehind the back, of the flesh-eating ghoulthat sips your soul, carves telling stonesfrom finger bones, Our Fathers and Hail Marysstrung on calcified rosaries. Fingers that once folded in prayer,this Halloween beware! Kim M. Russell, 21st October 2020 My response to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings […]
Willow Wraith
Lithe limbs still clad with curly leavesand protective ivy shield her naked bark.There is no morning mist to clothe nor breezeto make her dance. Just green breath of trees,the scent of chlorophyll to transport herto the beginning, when spirits did not needto hide inanimate in plants, rocks, ice and water.Invisible to all except husband, son […]
Bursting
Earth has birthed an abundance of fruit:tawny acorn knots rain hard from oak trees;hollies burn brightly with a blood-red flame;magenta spindles split open orange hearts.A young boy kicks spiky shells with his boot,searching for chestnuts in a sea of sunset leaves –it’s conker time, and children play the game,knocking hardened seeds until they burst apart. […]
The Price
What is the price of gold or silver?Whatever you are prepared to offer,but silver is my choice. What is the price of a stamp?It depends on the weightand the meaning of the words. What is the price of tomorrow?It is everythingand the value of nothing? Kim M. Russell, 14th October 2020 My response to Poets […]
Maybe It’s Because…
I stared at stars printed on the sky, the solar system in all its glory, and thought back to another time, a different city when Wren designed the dome that stands so proud beside the Thames, the best of London’s pride. I wondered about all who stood inside, who marvelled at the golden Byzantine oculus, […]
Mouth Agape
Never worn, just hangingthere,eyeless and mouthagape,an emptiness thatspeaksvolumes of historical festivityand plague,the drunken pox, depravity,appetites and follyof the age. Kim M. Russell, 12th October 2020 My response to earthweal weekly challenge: Earth-Masks Brendan has given us a detailed background to this week’s theme: masks, something we wear now as […]
Grammar of Happiness
I remember you remember me remember when I lost my mind I remember it well making music making bread making money making my way downtown and then what and then the sun rave song and then we danced and then he kissed me poet for our times poet for hire poet for love poet wife […]
writing in north norfolk 